


Pairs of Pumpkins Episode 2: The Seam-Straining Songstress

by JessFaulks



Series: Pairs of Pumpkins [2]
Category: Furry (Fandom)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Beards (Facial Hair), Fantasy, Fox - Freeform, Foxes, Furry, Musical, Other, Song - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-22 17:33:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30042252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JessFaulks/pseuds/JessFaulks
Summary: A very adult, fantasy, murder musical!In the wintery wastes of The Pale Lands, Portia and Joseph are hot on the trail of her lost children. But is Portia’s fiery independence in her brain or in her blood? Put into situations of servitude without control of their own destiny, how many of them would also dream of rebellion?Meet a new daughter, Anya, a bear-fox hybrid who has spent her young life acquiring the skills of an ideal wife-to-be. Already a master seamstress, cook, maid and butler, she finds her only true joy in song…
Series: Pairs of Pumpkins [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1953265
Comments: 3
Kudos: 1





	Pairs of Pumpkins Episode 2: The Seam-Straining Songstress

  
The Pale Lands were a natural fortress, an island Queendom built within the jagged-toothed, gaping maw of the world itself. Without a map to one of a handful of ports, any sailing ship that wished to disembark would need to be crewed by mountaineers. Past the teeth that engulfed the basin beyond were a second row of skyward-stabbing spears, towering, snow-dressed evergreens that covered the land like a thick coat of fur. Each one was tall and hearty enough to survive in both of The Pale Lands climate zones: miserably cold and even-colder-than-that.  
  
On the foothills between the mountains and the basin where the trees reached the highest, a house hid far away from any village or town. It was a modest, frontier house and would be common enough were it not for where it sat, placed like an ornament, high in a treetop. It's chimney puffed with life, the smoke disappearing easily into the sky's perpetual grey and the windows glowed warm with life.  
  
Behind the glass of one of them, another curiosity stood: a teenage vixen of uncommon appearance and suspicious heritage, looking out to her world, a thicket of treetops as far as the weather would let her see. There were a few other windows but the views they allowed were all worse: Trees. Clouds. Mountain face, too close to see the peak. This window was closest to the stove and only this one had ever suggested there was more to life. On the clearest of days, in the blur of the horizon, she swore she could see a whiteness that wasn't mountains or forest. Her master assured her that beyond it was little more than hostile, icy waste and people who would reject her very existence but for the girl who had never left the treehouse, it was a promise of a world bigger than her own.  
  
Her name was Anya and her coat was unusual for a fox but she only knew this from stories as she had never met another. Her fur was not white or red, sandy or dusty grey but rather like the half-hidden trunks of those thousands of trees, a dense, mahogany color that promised to both keep her warm and blend in well at the floor of the forest among the dirt and bark, were she ever allowed to venture back down to them.  
  
Anya was tall, over six feet and naturally thick and stout in proportions hugged by an ankle-length dress of deep green. Her muzzle was shorter than was common for a fox as were her ears, also more rounded at their tips. Her full, black, hair was neatly triple-braided and hadn't been cut in years, a mass of rope with girth enough to moor a ship, spilling down her back to bat against her tiny, un-foxlike tail when she moved. It was heavy but she long ago learned to not complain about it. "The weight will ensure you always hold your head high and proud," Master Wilhelm had said.  
  
Her breath was far enough away to barely register on the cold glass. While the handful of other people she had met would fog up the window instantly, she was held some distance away from it and everything else by a bosom she knew was as uncommon as it was burdensome. Abundant breasts dominated her upper body, wider than her relaxed arms and lower than the bottom of her ribcage, half obscuring her stomach.

It was supported as well as could be in the dress, tailored to fit her, by her, demonstrating a skill in sewing beyond her age. Below her waist, it was loose enough to move freely, before cinching in at her broad hips, Above them, it was fitted to the curves of her form, up and in to her sturdy waist before blooming out like a wine glass to contain her breasts. The thick fabric hid an elaborate spiderweb of support she had sewn into it, shaping them to be high and proud on her chest, so much so that she could wrap her arms around them only enough to overlap her palms. It was as conservative a cut as her body would allow, the dress reaching just above the floor, all the way up to wrapping her shoulders and down to her wrists. A hole at the base of her spine allowed the fluff of a tail to poke out.  
  
Form-fitting clothes like the upper half of her outfit were allowable in the Queendom's otherwise strict fashion regulations, rules she only knew about from patterns and different guests over the years. It was a matter of practicality in such a cold place, to not make anything that helped to stay warm illegal. Only the dress' neckline was in obvious violation, and plunged broad and low toward the apex of her bust. The cut emphasized not only the artificial curves of cleavage created by the support but also the golden brown fur of her chest that broke up the darkness of the rest of her, a two-tone belly that climbed up to her muzzle. Sparse, accent spots of white peppered that path, from the tops of her breasts up to her neck, cheeks and to her nose. The revealing alteration, which all her dresses and blouses bore had been at her Master and Keeper's request. He encouraged her to be proud of her body but she knew it was not her pride and self-confidence that were Wilhelm's primary motivation in dressing her this way.

She sighed, finally giving enough breath to fog up her view. She raised a lone digit of her sizable, clawed-tipped hand and drew one rounded ear, then another. An eye, another eye, a dot for a nose and below it all, a deep and dramatic frown before she looked over her shoulder, back to the house's interior.

The treehouse prison of the top-heavy teenager was small and modest, with adequate space for two residents to move about without getting in each other's way but also ensuring it could be continually warmed efficiently by a Ring of Pyromancy Wilhelm had acquired in his youth, that had been adapted through some elaborate engineering to function as an under-the-floor furnace without requiring a dangerous, open flame.

The round room was divided up like slices of pie, with each one serving a different purpose. The living area was the biggest of them, with a couch and chairs and a dining table for four but it was mostly clear, with room enough for Anya to dance when it was requested of her. In one of the chairs, behind a giant harp sat a scowling and impatient, grey hag of a mink, her glare focused on the fox. Behind the dining table were double doors to a small balcony. In one, particularly long summer, they stayed open for two whole weeks.  
  
Off to one side of the room was the wooden car of a hand-operated elevator with a footprint nearly two yards square suspended from a thick rope and pulley from the roof's main support beam. Beside it, the rope was rolled up on a giant spool mechanism connected to a ratcheting, automatic hand brake and an elaborate set of gears so broadly leveraged that a child could use the hard crank to lift a boulder. Two bells of different sizes were mounted on the housing, one connecting to a smaller spool and to the elevator car and the other attached to a string that disappears down into the floor. A much simpler, backup version of the crank system existed in the car itself but would require significantly more strength to operate.  
  
On the wall, a polished, great axe and a table-sized shield, boasted of the home of a retired adventurer of immense size and power. Beside the display were two headless, wooden tailor's mannequins: one of a massive, brute of a physique, over nine feet that wore and impressive suit of steel and leather armor. The other was of an impossibly bosomed woman of ambiguous species, with a small cutout for a tail. It was dressed in a half-made black dress. Next to them was a wall-to-ceiling vanity mirror.  
  
"Anya, come back. We're not done with your lesson," the mink's grating voice ripped her back to the moment. With reluctance and despair, she finally acknowledged the decrepit mustelid seated at the harp. "You're supposed to be practicing. Wilhelm is going to want you to perform a song when he gets home."  
  
"All I ever do is practice!" she spun around, giving her dress an angry twirl before she stomped away from the window, her long braid of heavy hair swinging behind her. She stepped into the torchlit center of the room towards the flinching woman, who could never get used to the girl's outbursts.  
  
It was a lot for the frail, older woman to see so much vixen in motion at once, all that contained, soft flesh threaten to burst free of her dress if adequately provoked. "Practice, practice, practice. You want a song, Madam Muskov? Here's a song for you:"  
  
_"Every morning I wake up almost an hour before the sun_  
_I make myself pretty for my master then I get chores done_  
_I cook all our meals for the day_  
_A laborer who gets no pay_  
_With no time for stimulation, exploration, rest or fun._  
  
_When he leaves, my tudors will resume my education_  
_Cooking, cleaning, entertaining, singing with elation!_  
_You've all made sure that my whole life_  
_Was spent becoming a perfect wife_  
_Seventeen years training for a submissive vocation."_  
  
Madam Muskov laughed and smiled at her song, clapping along. Anya sneered.  
  
_"I could weave and stitch a dress from scratch by the day I turned eight_  
_I was a world class cook by age twelve for his hunger to sate_  
_A trained masseuse, his nurse sometimes_  
_I've painted this whole house five times_  
_I'm the perfect prodigy homemaker, there's just no debate._  
  
_After training then there's exercise to keep my tummy flat_  
_He wants a wife strong like like a horse but as agile as a cat_  
_While he lays like a sack on the couch_  
_In my regiment I can't slouch_  
_Because my big breasts are the only part of me he wants fat."_  
  
Anya paraded around the room, twirling and strutting before flopping down on the second, over-stuffed chair next to Madam Muskov, who gave a small and relieved smile. She was nervous. "Well Anya, you made quite a lovely song but I've told you before, improvisation is artform for peasants."  
  
"Oh Madam Muskov, I know Wilhelm pays you to train me but can you really buy off a woman's sense for a creep?" she laughed in disbelief, then slapped her hands down on the armrests of the chair. She pulled herself out of it and launched herself to the nearby bedpost, everything cozy and quaint in their treehouse build for two, large residents and one rotating guest, currently this dour and ugly mink vocal couch and harpist. Anya hated the harp. Madam Muskov gave an absolving shrug.  
  
_"Sure he calls me his Princess and in not much time I'll be his Queen_  
_but I'm the sap who mops the floors and has to keep his britches clean_  
_I'm a bird locked up in a cage_  
_Lucky for me, I'm still teenage_  
_Because things will get worse for me as soon as I turn eighteen."_

"Oh Anya, womanhood is nothing to fear! Every girl takes a husband and raises a family," Madam Muskov gave a dismissive wave in front of a phony smile. Anya stopped, looking at her in disbelief.  
  
"Who said anything about fearing womanhood? I think I'm pretty damn womanly already!" she said, slapping her palms to the bottoms of her breasts, hefting them. "I'm talking about indentured servitude and arranged marriage to a man who disgusts me. I'm amazed he's managed to keep his hands off me as long as he has. He sure can't keep his eyes off me."  
  
"You're a special girl, Anya. You were born to be a wife and mother. Just look at you!" Anya looked away in a pout gave whip of her dress as she spun away, stopping in front of the mirror.  
  
"Why not? Everyone else does?"  
  
With a deep sigh, she started again.  
  
_"It's true that Master Wilhelm has some strange obsession my chest!_  
_He says they're the biggest in the world, like somehow that's the best_  
_He says they're why I cant go outdoors_  
_What in the world are they good for_  
_If they're why I am stuck here then I'm clearly cursed not blessed."_  
  
Anya arched her back, stomping about on the wooden floor, bouncing about, as much as her dress would allow. She twirled over to the mannequin of herself and hugged it from behind, distorting her chest against it just to be able to reach around and grope her own, wooden likeness.

_"Is the world outside this place so unaccepting of this rack_  
_Would they ask how I walk with them, would they say 'my dear! Your back!'_  
_Are people really so shunning_  
_Of Nice girls not built for running_  
_Or is he just afraid if I go out there, I won't come back?”_

_She looked back at Madam Muskov, with a huff of disdain._

_You talk like I have a destiny but all I have's enormous tits_  
_Do they overrule my ambitions, my dreams, my brains and wits?_  
_Just because I developed this way_  
_I'm doomed by my unloved fiancé_  
_To a lifetime of servitude, sloppy sex and suckling kits."_  
  
"Anya, don't be vulgar!" Madam Muskov scolded but Anya laughed, tossing herself into a dress-flipping cartwheel with joyful enthusiasm, landing near enough to the elder mink to startle her.  
  
"Which part is vulgar of me, Madam Muskov? Breasts? Children? Or all the things Wilhelm is going to do to me once he consummates our marriage on my eighteenth birthday?" Anya leaned in, watching her squirm. The next verse burst out like a cannon shot.  
  
_"Oh he'll fuck me in this windowsill as we watch the winter pass_  
_He'll bend me over the dinner table and stick it in my ass!_  
_I'll be lucky if he uses lube_  
_His gropey paws all over my boobs_  
_We both know what he plans to do but I'm that you call crass?!"_  
  
The towering vixen pulled out two of the chairs from the dinner table, scraping them across the wooden floor and presented them to the now mortified Madam Muskov. She flopped down into one of them and patted the seat of the other.  
  
_"He'll be eating his breakfast here, while he makes me eat his cock_  
_I'm sure he's going to fuck me until it's difficult to walk_  
_It'll be no rush to put kits in me_  
_I know that he prefers me skinny_  
_How does making children work when he's a bear and I'm a fox?"_  
  
Madam Muskov cleared her throat and straightened herself out in her seat. "Well Anya, as you know, normally it doesn't but you have a special gift."  
  
"Yes, of course," she said, presenting her big hands, palms up and claws out. "'I was born with the paws of a bear because I was destined to cradle cubs, not kits,' he says. I've heard it a million times. Can you dream of a bigger carriage-load of bullshit?! Do you even dream, Madam Muskov? Or did that part of you already age to atrophy like your heart, your face and your awful haircut?"  
  
The mink gasped at her brashness and Anya smiled. She slapped her hands on her knees and pushed herself back up to her feet, singing with an increasing fervor.  
  
_"Oh what a gift indeed, to be biologically prepared_  
_A vixen to bear the fruit of a one ton grizzly bear_  
_What if pushing out his progeny_  
_My hips snap in two or three_  
_It seems unlikely I will survive the birthing of his heir."_  
  
She turned and paused in a moment of realization but as soon as Madam Muskov's mouth moved, she resumed her song.  
  
_"How could Wilhelm have known all this when he adopted me?_  
_A vixen who can bare bear cubs, what a strange curiosity!_  
_That he knew this of a crying kit_  
_I'm not sure that I believe it_  
_I'm starting to have my doubts about my Master's honesty."_  
  
Muskov tried to hide it but she squirmed. She knew something and Anya saw it. The tall fox grinned and stepped closer with a fire in her eyes and the fur of the back of her neck standing up.  
  
_"And even if he's told the truth, then what a truth it is indeed!_  
_An old bear trawling orphanages to raise himself a wife to breed_  
_To seek a innocent to adopt_  
_For a wife, that bear must be stopped_  
_Perhaps the time has come for this caged bird to be freed?"_  
  
Anya towered over the seated Madam Muskov now, her breath heavy and excited. She leaned down closer until their noses were just inches apart, her bosom occupying the mink's lap and more. The old woman had shrunk in her chair, speechless for the moment.  
  
"You don't seem to like my song anymore. Perhaps we should adjourn today's music lesson, Madam Muskov," Anya's voice was deeper now and loaded with the bass of a growl, her ears flattened back against her hair.  
  
CLANG!  
  
Both of them jumped as the brass bell by the elevator crashed through the tension, rung from a ground-level rope. Wilhelm had returned.  
"Oh, thank the Gods," Madam Muskov sighed with relief and sat herself back up, straightening her dress and resuming her practiced poise, smug down to the way she sat. Anya didn't move but the mink's newly returned confidence filled the space between them.  
  
A crooked smile slowly formed at one edge of the fox's muzzle and she gave a sudden lick of her teacher's nose, coaxing a squirm from her before Anya pushed off the arms of the chair to stand again.

  
"Coming dear!" She rushed to the crank and released the handbrake, allowing the elevator car to fall, the spool that held it up rapidly unraveling. When the car fell through the floor, a separate door that had been sitting atop it, slightly larger than the hole, dropped into place and ensuring the winter cold would stay out while the elevator was down. The spool spun quickly, dampened once it reached a certain speed so it wouldn't shatter when it reached the ground.  
  
The elevator car stopped after a long descent, the forest floor over a hundred yards below them. The rope was spent with the car resting on the snowy, forest floor, the whole system built to this exact dimension. After another long moment, the second, smaller bell rang with a different pitch and Anya wound up with her whole body before pushing on the crank. She paused a moment after, not expecting the amount of resistance before she looked up to Madam Muskov with a chuckle. "I don't know why I should be surprised. He gets fatter every time he comes back." She gritted her teeth and put her whole body into getting the crank moving, slowly at first but with an increasing vigor until doubling over at the waist and sending her massive chest into battle against it's restraints, slapping against the crank handle and almost to her own face.  
  
Madam Muskov smiled and folded her hands in her lap as she watched, letting them fall from her troubled heart. She too old and wise to be disrespected by the impudent teenager.

The cranking went on and Anya was relentless, working up a sweat. "Feels like he went shopping for boulders!" she laughed to Madam Muskov and grinned herself. The gears started creaking and complaining from her vigor and speed. A stitch popped in the back of her dress, then another, leaving her chest that much less restrained in the violence of her motion. Never had the girl been so eager to see her Master. Madam Muskov froze and her smile softened like wax in the sun.  
  
"What are you doing, Anya?" Madam Muskov's voice trembled before she stood, clenching her fists and watching.  
  
Anya cackled. "Welcoming home my Master and future husband, of course!" Her braid was coming loose from the violence of her motion and long locks of black hair were falling in her face but she didn't bother to correct them. The lid of the elevator bumped up from the top of the car before Anya released the crank abruptly, letting it fall a few inches before the brake ratcheted into place, causing a violent shudder through the whole mechanism and floor surrounding it.

"What the fuck are you doing, stupid girl?!" a voice boomed through the crack between the lid and the floor. "Trying to break the whole damn elevator? You want us to be stuck up here forever so we can starve to death?"  
  
Anya held still, her hands outstretched and open where she released the lever, her eyes wide, mouth hanging open and disheveled hair in her face. Only her eyes were active, which found the mortified, Madam Muskov leaning towards action. A slight rhythm returned in a bobbing of her head before she began to softly sing, quiet enough that Wilhelm, hanging below the treehouse in the winter wind, would not be able to hear.  
  
_"Don't look at me as if you think that I'd ever hurt my master!_  
_I'm so happy to see him I just couldn't crank it any faster_  
_But this rope is old and it has flaws_  
_And careless me has such sharp claws..."_  
  
She unfolded herself upright and all was still for a long moment. Anya was the first to move, taking a steps back toward the spool before she whispered the conclusion of her stanza:  
  
_"...If this elevator failed, it'd be quite the disaster."_  
  
"Anya, what's the bloody hold up!?" Wilhelm barked over the sound of winter. Through the thick wood of the floor, he could hear her boots make the wood creak as she clopped in slow, deliberate steps, toward the spool.  
  
"Odd thing, isn't it? To be powerless?" Anya mused loud enough now for Wilhelm to hear it. "To not have any control over what's about to happen in a few years, a few months... even the next few minutes?" She stopped at the span where the spool connected to the pulley above the elevator by the thick rope. She leaned in and wrapped her hands around it, brandishing her claw-tipped fingers.

  
"What are you babbling about, Anya?" Wilhelm had lowered his voice somewhat. There was a hint of alarm. "Stop messing around and pull me up!"  
  
Anya tightened her grip and dug in her claws with her whole posture. Madam Muskov gasped aloud.

  
_"I'm sorry Wilhelm this relationship isn't working for me_  
_I don't have the instincts of a mother, wife or other slavery_  
_I know you love my busting seams_  
_But I'm a girl with hopes and dreams_  
_And you're standing in the way of any of those possibilities."_  
  
"Why are you singing?!" The bear bellowed from below as the elevator car shook from him shifting inside it. "I didn't tell you to sing."  
  
Anya laughed wickedly. "That should not be your biggest concern right now, Wilhelm!"

  
She wrenched her hands on the rope and dug in her claws. It reacted to the tiniest change in its strength with a creak in protest and the elevator car lurched.  
"Anya, I'm three hundred feet over the ground!" Wilhelm protested, starting to realize his peril.  
  
"Gravity has never been on your side Wilhelm but for your part, you've done little to resist it," Anya called back melodiously, sawing away at the rope, one hair width at a time. Madam Muskov's body tensed at the edge of action but her eyes kept finding those long, black claws of the thick and strong fox. "Tell us about how you went looking through orphanages for your future wife, Wilhelm. Tell us in a way that doesn't make you the villain here!" she shouted back.  


"It was an arranged marriage, Anya! It's just how they work!"  
  
"You arranged it by going to the orphanage and picking the baby girl with bear paws you knew would grow up to have huge breasts? Quite a story, Wilhelm. I'm not sure I believe you!"

  
"She's cutting the rope!" Madam Muskov found the courage to screamed out the obvious, earning a menacing smile from Anya.  
  
"She's right, Wilhelm!" she confirmed boisterously before her song continued.  
  
_"For all the ways you've used me all these years you should already know_  
_This situation's not good for me, I think I have to let you go_  
_Your story it just doesn't add up_  
_I get the sense that I've been setup_  
_My fate waits outside this treehouse and your fate waits down below."_  
  
Anya shivered with a broad smile across her muzzle. "Music is so much fun, Madam Muskov! Thank you for encouraging this wonderful gift!"  
  
"I've encourage none of this madness!" the old mink shook her head frantically.  
  
"That's it Anya, I'm coming up there myself!" the bear roared and the elevator shuddered, moving back up an inch. The car had it's own crank! She had never operated it but it was what he would use to bring them both up in her childhood, when she was still allowed to join him on the forest floor. In those days, Wilhelm had still been a musclebound, recently retired adventurer, likely capable of climbing the rope unaided but it had been nearly a decade since he'd used it.  
  
Sapped for the moment of her courage, Anya shrunk back and froze, clutching her hand to her bosom. The elevator car moved again, a tiny lurch, followed by another but never enough to catch the next tooth of the ratchet. Her eyes darted to the mink, who crumpled in anticipation, watching the gears trying to make progress but they couldn't. The car didn't ascend any further and the fox let a long, slow breath escape and relaxed her posture.

  
"What's the matter, Wilhelm? Does the crank not work? Because I keep the maintenance schedule, just like you made me. Third day of every month, without fail! Inspect the gears, oil the spindles, sand down the spurs. Maybe all these years of me pampering you made you squishy and weak. Too soft to lift your own weight?"  
  
He only grunted as he tried again but she was in no hurry now as she reached out then dragged a clawed finger over the now prominent fraying. He felt it.  
"You're right, Anya! I've been lying to you!" He said gruffly, a crack in his voice. She lifted her finger from the rope, instead gripping it with her whole hand, letting it bear some of her weight. It creaking under tension in the silence that followed. "I can..."  
  
"Sing it."  
  
Wilhelm sighed loud enough to be heard over the howling wind that snuck between the gaps of the elevator car and the floor. "I...purch..."  
"I SAID SING IT!!!"  
  
The bear fumed in stillness for some time but with an evenness of speech and cadence, he began, flatly:  
"I purchased you from a wizard. He wasn't a lizard."  
"Don't waste my time with your half-assed attempts. You're singing for your life, Wilhelm. Make it good."  
  
He cleared his throat audibly and a long moment of silence followed. Anya and Madam Muskov exchanged curious looks, neither sure what would happen next. And then, for the first time they had ever heard, the big bear sang:

_"I was a good axe-for-hire but I was sad and all alone_  
_I never found myself a love in life I could call my own_  
_And as time passed, the years went on_  
_I found that my heart and spirit longed_  
_To have a wife and children and a place that was our home."_

  
Anya straightened out and let go the rope, looking to Madam Muskov who was every bit as surprised. The giant brute of a bear was built to bellow and it turned out he could do so with incredible control of his volume, timbre and tone. Most unexpected though was that the big brute's voice was a delicate tenor, sounding like a much younger, much slighter man or even a boy. He continued:

_"I spent the whole fortune of a decade of adventuring_  
_On a made-to-order guarantee of most superb offspring_  
_A designer wife to love_  
_To be a mother for my cubs_  
_With an honor oath not to consummate before you were eighteen."_  
  
It was the first moment that the two women had shared in some time and it left the fur of their arms standing up. His voice cut through the wind and the woods, filling the house with warmth and calm. It was the antithesis of everything she had ever known Wilhelm to be.  


Anya broke the silence. "You've been able to sing all this time yet never in my life have you done it. Why?"

  
The bear was silent for a long moment before answering her. "I only do it when I'm alone. My voice... the other adventurers used to say it was a girl's voice. I was supposed to be this tough guy but people would make fun of me so I stopped."

  
"And.. you spent your whole fortune on a... designer wife? What does that make me? Am I real?" She stepped back, her entire posture softening. She looked down at herself, then back to the mirror. "Am I some kind of flesh golem? An automaton? Am I actually alive?" She dropped her arms and turned her attention back to the elevator car. "If you had me made, why didn't you make me an adult already?"  
  
Wilhelm gave a small laugh from down below. "Don't be silly, Anya. You're very much real. Flesh and blood. Good blood. I purchased you from a wizard who specialized in life energy. You weren't born of conventional means but you're made from conventional materials. With some alterations, anyway. Biologically, you have a mother, who was a fox and a two fathers, one a fox and one a bear. Which as you know, usually isn't possible but with magic..."  
  
"You made me this way? To be some kind of unnatural half-breed? Why not a proper bear if you wanted children so bad?"  
  
"Quarter breed," he corrected. "There was no bear that would grow up to be you. The wizard wasn't selling just any children but a remarkable, royal, vulpine bloodline that would guarantee brains and beauty. By magically combining it with a father of a different species, he made you capable of carrying my young." He was quiet for a long moment then said again: "Can you please pull me back up now?"  
  
Anya's expression soured as he spoke but Madam Muskov's momentary reprieve had ended with Wilhelm's confession. She now sat in stunned disbelief.  
  
_"It all makes sense now, Wilhelm and I must admit my heart has stirred_  
_But then again that's the most selfish bullshit that I've ever heard_  
_You pine about how lonely you were_  
_I've spent my life locked in your tower_  
_You talk about love regardless for what your partner preferred."_  
  
Wilhelm growled down below. "You're here for your own safety. The outside world is not kind to girls like you. Girls who look like you do."  
"But you made me look like this!"

  
"No, I didn't! Your chest... comes from your mother's bloodline."  
"You made me with a wizard but these are completely natural? And you knew her blood would make me like this?"  
  
"It's... a desirable trait of a wife."  
  
"This royal bloodline is responsible for these breasts?" Anya asked while Madam Muskov gasped and covered her heart.  
  
"And so there are others out there like me, carrying around these ridiculous things?"  
"I suppose so."  
  
She clenched her fists, steadily boiling over. "Others. In the outside world. Not just surviving without your protection but ruling."  
  
"Anya..."  
  
She snapped back into her song with swelling fury.  
  
_"You've told me quite a revelation, my heart can find some sympathy_  
_I've become an expert now on what it means to be lonely_  
_But it makes me somewhat concerned_  
_You believe love is bought not earned_  
_And you've kept me here for seventeen years without my free agency._  
  
_You act like custom ordering a bride's a normal thing to do_  
_And I'm supposed to pity that, by the Gods what's wrong with you?!_  
_You convinced me I'm a helpless teen_  
_I might be a Duchess or Queen_  
_It's not just to YOUR standards that I'm allowed to live up to!"_  
  
Wilhelm sang back, still trying to sooth the seething vixen.  
  
_"You're my perfect, little darling and you're only safe with me_  
_The world out there is a dangerous place for pretty girls to be_  
_You're skilled in so many ways_  
_But useless with an axe or blade_  
_To be able to fight, in this world is the only life that's free._  
  
_You mean well but you know nothing of the world, my precious child_  
_The place is full of brigands, bandits, and monsters, dangerous and wild_  
_The foul world that lies down below_  
_Would eagerly swallow you whole_  
_You wouldn't last a day out there, you'd be corrupted and defiled."_  
  
"Royal blood, Wilhelm. You said I had royal blood! If there are Queens out there who look like me then I have no place being trapped in here by the likes of you."

Madam Muskov took a step back and the floorboard's creak announced it. Anya's ire whipped to her and beyond but there was no apparent weapon within reach. The mink was giving her space, her hands open and out, nonthreatening. Wilhelm sang again, with annoyance in his voice.  
  
_"Royals command armies with thousands of soldiers in their ranks_  
_Royals buy their loyalty with fortunes stashed in guarded banks_  
_The ruling class they wrote the deal_  
_Blood's useless without gold and steel_  
_They hide behind fortress walls for they know that power lies in strength._  
  
_But you have no royal family and you have no title to transfer_  
_You have but one single soldier for your safety to ensure_  
_Freedom means having the skills_  
_To buy and order, hunt or kill_  
_Outside castle walls, your blood 's worth nothing more than tits and fur."_  
  
Anya was silent. She glanced over to the trembling Madam Muskov, who was against a wall and had slid down it, seated on her ankles. The old mink had never been a threat, with hardly spine enough to stand. The fox's attention returned to the elevator trap door before she reached out to grip the frayed rope once again. "Wilhelm, I think you are underestimating just how much power I have."  
  
"You have nothing! You are nothing without me!" the bear howled. "I bought you! I raised you! I own you! You owe me EVERYTHING!"  
  
Anya smiled again and lifted a single claw, running it over the rope.  
  
_"Your cynicism paints a world where might dictates the narration_  
_You don't see the value of discourse or fair negotiation_  
_Witness the fact you didn't try_  
_To budge your stance or even lie_  
_For me to concede and agree to complete your elevation._  
  
_You could have offered to bring me out on your next endeavor_  
_You could've said 'I'll let you go' then chain me up forever_  
_I'm not difficult to appease_  
_But to you I'm just property_  
_And now you're at the end of a rope I'm about to sever."_

On cue, it complied with her words, lurching as the load on each, single fiber increased, taught like a harp string.

  
"Fine, Anya! I'll take you with me next time. I'll let you out into the world!" The bear was desperate, feeling the movement of the elevator. The rope was half as thick around where it was frayed, threaten to snap at any moment.

"A little late for that, Wilhelm. You tipped your hand. This is the only way."  
  
He growled and tried to pull himself up once again, shaking the car violently as he called up to her, shouting and snarling his words. Anya's index finger claw started sawing again.  
  
"I can't believe your lack of gratitude! You owe me everything!"  
_"I owe you only for the inspiration of this song to sing!"_

"You don't have the instinct to do this, you're not the type to kill!"  
_"I have no lust for blood like you but I lust for my free will!"_  
  
"But how will you defend yourself out there? With clever rhymes to sing?"  
_"I'll use my voice to form words because violence can't solve everything."_  
  
"You'll starve up here, Anya. How will you hunt? What will you eat?"  
_"I've got winter stores and I'm about to tenderize a half tonne of meat!"_  
  
Madam Muskov gasped at that suggestion. The trap door rattled from the thrashing of the heavy bear, trying and failing to pull himself up repeatedly.  
  
"Stop it, Anya! You mad girl, stop! Stop singing! Stop making every word a rhyme!"  
"You won't have to endure it for much longer, Wilhelm. This rope is now naught but twine!"

Winded and unsuccessful in his struggle to climb, The bear fell still in the elevator car beneath them. "I'm the only one who loves you, Anya! You can't do this to me!" His rage crumbled to desperate hysterics.

  
Anya stilled herself and took a loud, deep breath, staring at the frayed rope, then back to the trap door between her and her captor.  
  
"Yes, I can." She hooked her claw around the fray and dragged it, severing another bundle of the braided rope: the last bunch that was keeping it's integrity.  
  
The rope snapped like a foul pluck of the harp and the trap door dropped back into place, the elevator suddenly not there. It didn't seem to fall so much as disappear and to the sturdy treehouse, it made no difference to shed the weight of one bear and the car that carried him. Everything was just the same without him. Even the thick, winter air made little accommodations for his scream as he fell away. Seconds later, the impact of so much shattering wood and meat, sounded barely more than a dropped snowball from their elevation.  
  
Madam Muskov stared at Anya, mortified, her ears curled back so far, they were trying to retreat into her skull. The teen herself was frozen, her own expression not dissimilar.

THUD.

Something was on the balcony.  
  
THUD.

A second, lighter noise followed. The other foot?

Both women were still, statues exchanging wide-eyed disbelief before their eyes moved to the doors. Was it real? How could it be? Wilhelm had just fallen to his death. They had heard him scream as he fell. Hadn't they?

Boots fell and floorboards creaked again. Someone was definitely out there. Could Wilhelm have jumped free and climbed for his life? Even if he had the strength to do so, had he the time? The footsteps neared the door, uneven. Was he on all fours? Steps drew closer then stopped.  
  
The doors jostled but were stuck. There was no need to lock them up here but the wood tended to warp in it's frame, as the doors were often not opened for months at a time.

Both Anya and the old mink snapped out of their daze but only the younger took action, running to the axe mounted on the wall. The stout vixen had her hands on it, starting to lift the massive weapon despite never having swung it in her life.  
Behind her, the doors burst open with a violent shove and Anya whipped her attention back to them. It was not Wilhelm's massive silhouette that filled the wind-howling doorway. Instead it was two foxes, a woman and a teenage boy. They stepped over the threshold and into the house, hands open and unarmed.

The boy was near her age, a handsome young fox with white fur, a head shorter than the older woman and two shorter than Anya, wearing heavy, winter clothes. One of his gloved fingers was wrapped straight in a splint. He closed the double doors behind them, silencing the wind outside before stepping up beside the vixen.

She was ivory-furred, a paler but near-spitting image of Anya, shorter, leaner and more mature. Her furred-lined cloak hung open, revealing light armor covered in pouches and pockets but it was her gigantic, hard leather breastplate that demanded the most attention, high and round, very much enormous and held tightly in restraint of soft flesh. The piece had obviously seen combat and repair over the years.  
The ivory vixen slowed to a stop, seemingly just as stunned to be looking at Anya, whose hands fell away from the axe. The teenage boy stepped up to stand halfway between the both of them and cleared his throat.  
  
  
_"Hi I'm Joseph, nice to meet you! I'm your younger brother_  
_This fine lady here is Portia but you can call her your mother!"_

Portia reached out to rest her hand on Joseph's shoulder. "I think the song is over, dear."  
  
Anya walked closer carefully, reaching out a finger to close the distance between them until it mashed against her leather-armored bosom, it bending before the breastplate gave.  
  
The ivory vixen gave a breath of a laugh. "The chunky bear was right: it runs in the family."  
  
Anya's eyes darted between her hand and Portia's emerald eyes before her attention moved to a dagger, strapped to the front of her chest, pointed end up to be able to draw it from below. With her finger still in place, she looked over her shoulder at the handle of a tomahawk running along her backpack, over her cloak.  
  
"You're a warrior?!"  
  
The ivory vixen raised her chin and gave an immodest smile. "You're damn right I am."  
Anya reached out with both hands, pausing a moment to look for permission. Portia gave a small nod before large paws splayed over the other vixen's armored breasts, attempting to move them. The armor refused and it's wearer waited, standing still. Hands moved underneath them, her own bosom brushing Portia's in their closeness, both of them filling what would otherwise be ample space between two bodies. Anya tried to lift them but again, they did not budge.

Anya's face erupted in a joyful smile. "Jump up and down?"

A blushing Joseph averted his eyes and veered away from the exchange, forcing himself a sudden interest in the complexity of the elevator gears.  
Portia tested the strength of the floor boards with a push of her boot first. "I generally wouldn't oblige that request but seeing as you're my daughter and we've just met..." She let her words trail off before she began jumping up and down in place, her weapons and pouches jiggling and jingling like a rattle but her breasts were held in near perfect restraint by the leather breastplate, molded, tailored and engineered to her specific physique.  
  
Anya stood there staring, cupping her muzzle in her hands as Portia counted to twenty before stopping, showing no sign of exertion. She stepped up and planted her hands on her mother's breasts again, feeling the hard leather before stepping around to inspect the straps, stitching and reinforcements.  
  
"My mother... is a warrior!?" She said with joyful disbelief before she lunged in to throw her arms around Portia, an awkward gesture that pulled the both of them closer. Anya's soft flesh gave way but Portia's didn't, pushing the taller, younger vixen's chest up and over, ballooning into her mother's face . She gave a small laugh and brought her arms up to her daughter, placing her hands on her shoulders, not able to reach much past.

Joseph stood behind the tall elevator machinery, one hand resting on them and the other below, watching with great interest as his busty mother and sister embraced, before he caught a disapproving glare from Madam Muskov. He averted his eyes , slapping his other hand down on the gears, presenting it.

He didn't hold the old mink's attention for long, her mouth already agape with a greater realization. She found the courage to speak. "Anya, your mother is a Princess."  
  
To another, that revelation might have some importance but Anya didn't move and spoke from the hug. "So what? Wilhelm believed anyone could be royalty. He knew it was in my blood. But he never believed I could be... this! I need armor like this!" she said, righting herself and dropping her hands from her shoulders to blindly take her mother's hands.

"Then we'll get you some made!" Portia's own smile was infected by Anya's joy.

"And a weapon!?"

"If you want. A training weapon, to start until you learn to use it. A lot of traditional techniques require some... adjustment for our build but I'm certain I'm the most qualified woman in the world to teach you that."

"Mother!" Anya repeated, stepping back and cupping her muzzle again, her eyes welling up with tears. "I... have a mother! And she's here!? Mother, whatever are you doing here?"  
  
  
Portia stepped up and offered her arms, which her daughter fell into again. This time her hands took her by her slimmer waist and hunching down to rest her head on the shelf of her bosom. "We came to rescue you from the creep who bought you as a child but you didn't need our help after all. Maybe you can use our help with whatever comes next?" Anya was silent for a long moment but for her sniffles and Portia rested her muzzle atop her daughter's ebony head of hair. Her leather gloved hand slide down her back, petting her. "I would have been here many years ago but I just discovered I had any children at all!"

Anya blinked at that. "Wilhelm said something about a wizard?"

"There is a wizard," Portia nodded, rubbing Anya's back. "I think you had him singing the truth at the end there. But it's a long story and those are best saved for the even longer roads ahead of us. Assuming you want to leave this place and come with us?"

Anya stood again and laughed. "I want to be literally anywhere but here, Mother."

"Great," Portia moved her hands to clamp down on Anya's shoulders. "Joseph!" He perked with attention, still half-hidden by the elevator machinery. "Help your sister pack and grab all the roadworthy food. Anya, grab only what you need for the cold and several days on the road. Dry rations, warm clothes and something to wear for nicer weather. You're our first and last stop in The Pale Lands. We're getting off this shithole island."

"You're the heiress to this shithole island, Princess Portia Vasiljev," Madam Muskov inserted and cleared her throat but her eyes nervously averted the moment Portia found them. Anya ran over to Joseph, the much shorter teenager wide-eyed before catching his sister's hug with her massive breasts to his face. She squeezed him fondly but briefly before holding him at arm's length.  
  
"C'mon brother. I'll show you where everything is."

Anya led him with her by the wrist to start packing while Portia stepped over to the aged mink. Her smile fading as she closed the distance between them until they were sharing breath.

  
"I don't know who you think you are or what you think you're doing but the official story is that I'm dead. I didn't fake my own death: I ran away. And my Mother, the Queen knows this. That tells me she decided she rather me be remembered as a dead daughter than a bad one. She lied to everyone. So if you want to be the one who runs back to town with a story that calls the Queen of this land a liar, you be my guest. But you didn't have any spine five minutes ago when my daughter killed your employer. I suggest you don't find it now."

Madam Muskov was flattened against the wall by then, pinned there by the growling vixen's ungiving chest, her bared teeth mere inches from the mink's muzzle. She remained there for long moment before righting herself and her demeanor.

"Now, I assume you live in the village of Letvyka since there's nowhere else reasonably close to here. We'll get you home safely. Whether you stay safe after that is entirely up to you."

Anya and Joseph has stopped and watched exchanged disbelieving, silent laughs before straightening out as their mother turned to face them, letting the menace leave her voice. "I guess you're not used to leaving the house, Anya so try your best to pack light. You need to slide down that rope with everything you bring and as you know, it's a long way down."

Within fifteen minutes, the treehouse was ransacked for useful supplies, coins and rations but most of Wilhelm's equipment and tools were too big to be of use for any of them. Anya had changed into another dress, that had not burst it stitches and wore it under an elegant, fur cloak, perfectly fitted to her with deep sleeves and a high collar to protect against the wind, an aspirational, tailoring project she'd made while longing for the world outside. A matching, short, cylindrical fur hat contained her loosened hair and promised to warm her head in the cold outside.  
  
As they gathered around the elevator hatch, Anya stopped and turned with a twirl of her cloak, unwittingly whipping Joseph in the process. She hurried to a cabinet and fetched a prybar, then rushed back to the center of the room. With an intense focus, she scanned the floorboards. "Wilhelm said our floor heater was originally used for throwing fireballs. That sounds useful," she knelt and wedged the prybar into place.

  
"That sounds... terrifying," Portia looked to Joseph while Anya popped the board free. The prybar was tossed aside and she reached in, feeling around until she presented a ring between her thumb and index finger. She slipped it on her ring finger, finding the fit of it perfect then hurried to her feet to her mother's disapproving gaze.  
  
"Be careful with that, okay?"  
  
Joseph went down the rope first, then Anya and lastly Portia, with Madam Muskov tied to her back. Upon reaching the ground, they found Anya over the broken body of Wilhelm, her head hung low.  
  
Portia exhaled a deep, visible breath before stepping over to her side, in the crunching, blood-splattered snow. At Anya's side, she guided her head to rest against and atop hers then wrapped an arm around her waist. "I heard the whole exchange, Anya while we were climbing the tree. You gave him every opportunity to recognize you as a person. Even with his very life in your hands, he refused to slacken his stranglehold. He refused to see the potential you have."  
  
Anya nodded slowly, wiping her eyes with the cuff of her cloak. "Let's go."   
  
Portia released her and started away from the base of the massive tree that supported the house, in a forest of trees so old that this one was so uncommon, it might be difficult to find again. The cruel wind and relentless snow hid the treehouse, the wreckage and the body behind them quickly enough as they walked away.  
  
"Anya?"  
  
"Yes Mother?"

"What was with all the singing?"

  
  
**THE END**  



End file.
